Stranded

by Aaron Saunders

  Then there was the issue of the flu outbreak on board. But Locke needn’t have worried about finding suitable applicants willing to leave Skagway on a moment’s notice at this time of year. As quickly as he had arrived at the Canadian Pacific office in Skagway, the portly sea captain found himself walking briskly back up Broadway toward his ship with ten new men in tow. For the new hires, it’s highly probable that this was a spirited walk filled with hollers and calls out to friends; six of Locke’s newest recruits had been poached right from the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad’s complement of waiters, and the small group would have had to walk across the tracks laid down the centre of Broadway and straight past the WP&YR’s offices to get to the piers and their new home on board Princess Sophia. They weren’t merely leaving Skagway for good: they were moving up to bigger and better things, and likely weren’t shy about letting the townspeople know.

  Juneau, Alaska, in the early 1900s. This is where Customs Collector John Pugh embarked Princess Sophia on the evening of Tuesday, October 22, 1918, and where she was destined to arrive on the morning of Thursday, October 24, 1918.

  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsc-02102.

  Broadway Street in Skagway, facing the cruise ship docks. In 1918 the WP&YR tracks would have run clean down the centre of the street, but many of the buildings remain largely unchanged.

  Now fully crewed, Captain Locke also took the time to visit Dr. William Gardner Gabie at his office in the White Pass Hospital on Broadway and 11th, at around 4:00 p.m. that afternoon.[6] Dr. Gabie’s official title was city health officer, which is the polite way of saying he was the only man in town to consult on medical issues.[7] Dr. Gabie had been summoned to the Princess Sophia when she had arrived in Skagway to determine the extent of the possible influenza outbreak on board, but was stopped at the top of the gangway by Second Officer Frank Gosse, who refused to let Dr. Gabie embark. Not wishing to risk potentially spreading the disease to the residents of Skagway with winter closing in, Second Officer Gosse offered to orally describe the symptoms of the six ill crewmembers, who were mostly stewards, to Dr. Gabie. “They all took sick about the same time,” Gabie would later recall. “They had all taken down with chills and fever and prostration.”[8]

  Dr. Gabie “gave the officers instructions on how to take care of those patients.” Before going back uptown to have influenza treatments prepared by the town druggist and left at the Canadian Pacific offices on Broadway for pickup, he requested Second Officer Gosse “see the Captain,” and asked that he be sent up to Gabie’s office to discuss the situation on board the Princess Sophia.

  Gabie had known Captain Locke for many years, and the doctor now welcomed Locke into his office warmly. Their half-hour conversation, however, revolved mainly around the crewmembers who had fallen ill. Locke wasn’t particularly frightened of the prospect of an influenza outbreak on board his ship, and Dr. Gabie would later testify that he seemed “just as he always was”[9] during their brief visit. Satisfied that Captain Locke had the situation under control (and reassured that he kept a small provision of “medicinal” rum on board at all times, tucked away under lock and key), Dr. Gabie said goodbye to Captain Locke, who returned to his waiting ship.

  Locke himself wasn’t immune to health issues. During the winter of 1917 Canadian Pacific Captain Arthur Slater was unexpectedly called in to relieve Captain Locke of his command on board the Princess Sophia. Locke had been complaining of ill-health, and head waiter Wolfe Templeman had overheard the captain mention his general discomfort while dining with several passengers at his usual table. Templeman waited on Captain Locke’s table from June 30, 1917, until he signed off in April of 1918. He would have the good fortune to not be present on board during Princess Sophia’s last trip.

  What was causing Locke such difficulty during the winter of 1917 is not known, but it seems to have been temporary. Templeman records that Captain Locke resumed command of Princess Sophia from Captain Slater on the following voyage. If his illness the previous winter troubled him at all now, Captain Locke never let on.

  When Locke arrived back at his ship, Second Officer Frank Gosse and Third Officer Arthur Murphy seemed to have a handle on the cargo situation. The two men had been working diligently ever since Princess Sophia had arrived in Skagway to supervise the offloading of her cargo that was to remain in the north. Now they were in the midst of trying to manoeuvre thirteen horses belonging to Herb McDonald across the dock apron and onto the ship via her exterior shell doors. McDonald had been a fixture in Dawson City for as long as most folks could remember, but he too was heading south for the last time, intending to transport his horses and burgeoning freight business to Vancouver. He looked on with his wife, Emma, as his strong equines were loaded onto the ship under the direction of James Kirk. A pioneer of the 1898 gold rush, Kirk had been hired by McDonald to oversee the transportation of his horses south. Unlike McDonald, however, Kirk fully intended to return to Dawson City at the next available opportunity in order to be with his wife. Even at fifty years of age, Kirk still wasn’t finished with the Klondike, and no doubt saw McDonald’s offer as a good chance to make some additional money before the lean winter months hit.

  Cargo is loaded onto a ship in Cordova, Alaska, in the early 1900s. The scene on the Skagway docks would have been much the same, with cargo and passengers coming and going.

  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsc-02263.

  McDonald’s thirteen made up the majority of the twenty-four horses that would be loaded onto the Princess Sophia, but there was one horse that had already attained almost mythical status by that night. Walter Barnes, a Dawson-area miner for nearly two decades, was making the trip south solely to accompany his loyal horse, Billy, to a farm in southern British Columbia where he would live out his last days. For eighteen years, the pure-white horse known fondly as “Old Billy” had served Barnes well, pulling carts loaded with gravel and gold through a 1,700-foot-long tunnel day in and day out. The resulting haul of gold had made Barnes a wealthy man, but Billy was now too old to work. Rather than have him sent to the slaughterhouse — or simply left to die on his own, which was not at all uncommon when animals had outlived their usefulness in the north — Barnes arranged to have Old Billy put aboard the Princess Sophia. He would make the journey south with his beloved companion and winter at his home in Vancouver before returning to Dawson City the following spring.

  Canadian Pacific’s Skagway agent, Lewis Hellett Johnston, had also placed five dogs on the cargo manifest. Along with the twenty-four horses they were the only living cargo placed aboard Princess Sophia that evening. The animals would turn out to be far less problematic than the other pieces of cargo waiting in the brightly lit sheds. With so many passengers looking upon this voyage not as a journey south but as an exodus, the cargo manifest was more varied than usual. Passengers were literally bringing their whole lives with them, regardless of what that entailed. Those who were staying behind to brave the winter in the north were also using Princess Sophia as a mail system; she carried with her several tons of Christmas presents destined for friends and relatives down south.

  In all, five tons of cargo of varying shapes and sizes would be loaded on board Princess Sophia for her southbound voyage, along with passenger baggage marked “Not Wanted On The Voyage” that would be stowed below until arrival in their port of disembarkation. With the late arrival of the White Pass & Yukon Route “boat train” from Whitehorse at 5:30 p.m., the simple act of loading all the baggage the passengers streaming off the train had brought with them and processing it for sailing would take a full hour and a half. Double-checking everything on the manifest was left up to twenty-year-old David Robinson, Princess Sophia’s young wireless officer. With little for him to do while his ship was moored, Robinson moonlighted as the ship’s freight clerk when she was not at sea.

  The scene that would have greeted those making their way to Skagway from the north aboard the WP&YR “bo
at train” was a bleak one. Outside of small towns like Carcross, civilization wouldn’t be seen until they pulled into town.

  By 7:00 p.m. most passengers were cleared to begin embarking the Princess Sophia. This was where Juneau Customs Collector John Pugh came in. He almost always went by Jack, and was both well-known and well-liked in Juneau, Skagway, and beyond. Enormously popular, he likely knew many of those embarking on Princess Sophia. With daylight now gone and the temperature dropping, the coolness of the October air nipped at Pugh as he went about his business, checking papers, and greeting old friends.

  Before the ship could sail, one final very important piece of cargo had to be loaded. It was left until nearly the last moment, when the docks had been cleared and most of the guests had embarked. Few had seen it arrive; fewer still even knew of its presence on board the Princess Sophia.

  The Wells Fargo Banking Company had been serving Alaskan communities since 1883, but in 1918 the United States government had taken control of the company’s express service as a wartime measure. Wells Fargo, meanwhile, was in the midst of withdrawing their operations in Alaska to focus on their business farther south.[10], [11] This could partly explain the presence on board Princess Sophia of a Wells Fargo safe containing $62,000 in gold bars[12] — roughly $960,000 in modern currency.[13] Because of its highly sensitive nature, it’s likely that the safe was personally signed for by Purser Charles Beadle. Since the Princess Sophia lacked a dedicated specie room for valuable cargo, Beadle directed the safe to be placed in the ship’s chart room, where gold had been stored on past voyages. Along with the safe, four additional bags of mail were also loaded on board the Princess Sophia. But these weren’t filled with letters and Christmas toys for the kiddies; instead, they contained another $70,000 in gold. They were placed alongside the safe in the chart room, where the ship’s officers could keep personal watch over such valuables.

  With all the necessary cargo and provisions on board and the passengers gradually settling into their staterooms, things on board Princess Sophia were drawing to their inevitable conclusion as paperwork was wrapped up and well-wishes given. To prepare for departure from Skagway, Captain Locke had Chief Engineer Charles H. Walker bring up the steam in the ship’s boilers. Walker was filling in for Princess Sophia’s first engineer, Archibald Alexander, who was granted permission at the last minute to miss the roundtrip sailing from Vancouver when his wife telephoned from Victoria to say that both of Alexander’s young children had come down with influenza, and his daughter was not expected to live. Walker, along with two other engineers, would cover Alexander’s watch rotations.

  Looking north down Broadway Street in Skagway, around 1900. Note the rails running down the centre of Broadway for the White Pass & Yukon Route trains.

  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsc-02005.

  Now Walker was doing just that. With a thin jet of black smoke beginning to pour from her funnel, Princess Sophia was finally ready to set sail at 10:00 p.m. — three hours behind her scheduled departure time of 7:00 p.m.

  Before she departed, Lewis Johnston, Canadian Pacific’s man in Skagway, briefly stepped on board Princess Sophia’s warmly lit deck to confer with Purser Charles Beadle. Both men agreed the process had gone as smoothly as could be reasonably expected, and Johnston wished him a pleasant trip south before ascending one deck to the navigation bridge. There he found Captain Locke readying Princess Sophia for departure. Johnston had known Locke for over a decade, and the two men took the chance to catch up, however briefly, and discuss the voyage ahead. Locke was satisfied with how things had gone, both in terms of the newly replaced crewmembers and the loading and offloading of passengers and cargo. At five minutes past ten, Lewis Johnston shook Captain Locke’s hand and left the navigation bridge.

  Clearly Locke had no issues with the evening’s embarkation or the voyage ahead. Lewis Johnston was the last man down the gangway that night. Stepping out into the cold, Johnston hiked up the collar of his greatcoat and exchanged waves with the crew as the gangway was removed from the Princess Sophia. He wished them a pleasant season and a safe journey south before he turned his back to the ship and slowly, quietly made his way back up the dimly lit expanse of Broadway Street. The night air chilled him, and he felt exhausted after a long day of work. He returned to his offices on Broadway just long enough to send a message to Captain James Troup, Canadian Pacific’s superintendent for the British Columbia coast, stating that Princess Sophia had departed shortly after 10:00 p.m. local time with two hundred seventy-eight passengers, twenty-four horses, and five tons of freight on board.

  At ten minutes past ten Princess Sophia slipped away from the pier on her last voyage south. Her itinerary was an active one. The next day she would call on both Juneau and Wrangell before setting sail for Ketchikan and Prince Rupert, where she would arrive on Friday, October 25. On Saturday the 26th she would come alongside in Alert Bay, and finally, on Sunday, October 26, 1918, she would dock at Canadian Pacific’s Pier D at the foot of Granville Street in Vancouver. From there connecting passengers could transfer to the inter-coastal steamers bound for Victoria and Seattle.

  For the passengers who were hearty enough to line her rails that night, few tears would be shed as Skagway slowly disappeared off the stern of the Princess Sophia. With so many passengers travelling on one-way tickets, they were looking forward to the journey ahead and delighting in the relative novelty of spending their first night on board a ship. By the time she had made her first turn to port and entered into the Taiya Inlet proper, most of Princess Sophia’s passengers had retreated indoors, lured by the glowing lights of the ship’s public rooms and the warmth of their own staterooms. Those who remained on deck would have experienced a sudden blast of cold wind that slammed into her superstructure as she made the turn; a moment all too common for ships sailing south toward the vast expanse of Lynn Canal. Gradually, these few hearty stragglers also retreated back inside.

  The Princess Sophia pulls away from Pier D in Vancouver, bound for Alaska.

  City of Vancouver Archives AM1535-: CVA 99-1185.

  Sailing Lynn Canal from Skagway, bound for Juneau. In 1918 the driving snow and fierce winds likely kept most passengers off Princess Sophia’s open decks and hid the mountain ranges from view, but those departing aboard Star Princess in 1995 would have enjoyed a similar view and weather conditions before retiring for the night.

  The cold wind from the north roared into Skagway too, driving onlookers away from Pier D and back to their houses. A few hearty souls wandered aimlessly back to the bars that had been the source of so much life during the gold rush, lamenting the fact that they could no longer treat themselves to the warmth of a liquid sort as they talked about days gone by. Alaska’s own prohibition law, dubbed the “Bone Dry” law, had begun at the start of 1918.

  Alcohol or not, it would make no difference to the story the townspeople of Skagway would soon have to tell — one of sorrow and sadness, of missed opportunities and rotten luck. The story would revolve around the ship that was just then disappearing from view as the snow started to fall, her 353 passengers and crew blissfully unaware of the dangers that lay ahead. Winter had come now to Skagway, and how dark it would be.

  MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1995

  ON BOARD STAR PRINCESS IN SEWARD, ALASKA

  Nearly seventy-seven years after the Canadian Pacific Steamship Princess Sophia had set out from Skagway, a larger, much more modern ship was preparing to do the same. On the evening of Thursday, June 22, 1995, Princess Cruises’ Star Princess was just pulling in the last of her lines after a successful visit to the famous gold rush town. Her bow lines splashed into the water and were hauled up along the side of her hull, dripping water into the harbour as they went. Star Princess was a little over a month into her Alaskan cruise season, which would last until September of that year. For many of her guests the week-long voyage from Seward to Vancouver was a once-in-a-lifetime experience; an escape from the everyday. However, for
the crew of the Star Princess this southbound voyage was normal and routine. It wasn’t an escape from the everyday; it was the everyday.

  Built in 1988 for Sitmar Cruises as their FairMajesty, Star Princess would never actually sail for them. Sitmar was put up for sale following the death of the company’s founder, Boris Vlasov, in November 1987. Princess Cruises’ parent company P&O Cruises snapped up Sitmar in July 1988, and had officially acquired all of their ships — including the still-unfinished FairMajesty — by September 1 of that year. FairMajesty was renamed Star Princess and was formally christened by actress Audrey Hepburn in Miami on March 23, 1989.

  High-profile actresses like Hepburn weren’t typically known for christening cruise ships at the time, and the news that Hepburn not only performed the traditional ceremonial blessing and the breaking of champagne against the hull, but also spent a week on board her maiden voyage as she sailed around the Caribbean, put Star Princess in the public consciousness. Even better for Princess, she proved to be a popular and commercially successful ship. While she would operate a variety of voyages over the next six years, Princess typically had her winter in the Caribbean and spent her summers cruising the photogenic waters of Alaska.

  The voyage had begun innocuously enough. On Monday, June 19, 1995, the 810-foot Star Princess came alongside in the small town of Seward, Alaska. Named after Secretary of State William H. Seward, who negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia, the town of 3,000 inhabitants served as Princess’s northern “turnaround” port on their Alaskan voyages. After a weeklong “northbound” journey from Vancouver, passengers would be disembarked and the ship cleaned and made ready to embark the next set of guests that afternoon. They would spend a week on board as Star Princess sailed her third southbound voyage of the season, with an itinerary that called on Prince William Sound, Glacier Bay, Skagway, Juneau, and Ketchikan before their scheduled arrival in Vancouver on Monday, June 26.